Who can connect in RCC?

Abstract

We provide a method for integrating de Laguna's geometry of solids into the region connection calculus (RCC). de Laguna's geometry of solids is concerned with solid-based (rather than point-based) comparative distance representations using the triadic primitive relation "can-connect". No formalization is given to the theory in the original version by de Laguna and his work is mainly in the form of a philosophical text. Our main contribution with this work is to give a formalization for de Laguna's theory within the framework of RCC. Although de Laguna's notions from the original version are kept intact, some modifications are made as the embedding procedure requires. Furthermore, we make use of the combined strength of the resulting theory to add representations into our formalism which can characterize notions of boundedness/unboundedness and finiteness/infiniteness.